By Hal Levy, Shore Line Newspapers
Special to MaxPreps.com
Masuk-Monroe’s Rachele Fico has reached rarified air with her softball team.
Fico tied a national record with her fifth consecutive perfect game and her sixth in her last eight starts. The latest was a 5-0 win over New Milford. It was also the 16th perfect game of her career, four shy of the national record set by Fresno (Calif.) ace Marissa Marzan from 1998 to 2001.
Masuk was 18-0 after the last of the perfect games and won again over Lauralton Hall and Newtown to make it 20-0. The Panthers topped both the New Haven Register media and coaches’ poll with all 17 first-place votes from the state-wide panel.
Bristol Eastern, which went into the week 13-0, and won four by shutout, is ranked second. Third is Trumbull, 17-0, which had two double-figure wins, then eked out a 2-1, eight-inning game with Stamford as Magen Dargon struck out 10 and allowed three hits.
Amity Regional, 15-2, avenged a loss to Cheshire with a 7-0 win, knocking the Rams from the ranks of the unbeaten and moving into a fourth-place tie with them in the poll.
Cheshire is 16-1 and won the Southern Connecticut Conference Housatonic Division and the top seed in the league tournament, which begins Tuesday.
Lauralton Hall (13-2) and Seymour (16-1) are tied for sixth in the poll. Lauralton’s loss to Newtown dropped it to third in the Southwest Conference while Seymour clinched the Naugatuck Valley League Brass Division and, most likely, the top spot in the conference tourney.
North Branford was 15-1 and ranked eighth when the poll came out, but the Thunderbirds lost back-to-back, one-run contests to Coginchaug-Durham, 5-4 and 1-0, and likely will fall a ways. Woodland-Beacon Falls, is 15-2 and ranks ninth with Fitch-Groton, 12-2, moving into tenth. Dropping out of the poll was Lyman Memorial-Lebanon.
Baseball
On the baseball side, it was a week for milestones. Mike Vacca, the coach at Ansonia for the past 31 seasons, got his 400th career win, 11-6 over Kennedy-Waterbury.
Mark Brookes, the only baseball coach ever at Haddam-Killingworth (32 seasons) got to 499 wins earlier in the week with an 8-3 decision over Coginchaug-Durham, but couldn’t get No. 500 on his first try. The Cougars lost to Sports and Medical Sciences-Hartford, 2-1, Thursday. H-K will play Valley Regional-Deep River Saturday and that could give Brookes the magic number.
Very few Connecticut coaches have achieved 500 or more wins. Two of them are active: North Haven’s Bob DeMayo, who has 769 as of Friday morning and Jim Penders of East Catholic-Manchester with 544 as of Friday.
Retired coaches who have hit the mark include John Fontana, Southington, 668; Ken Kezer, New Britain, 558, Whitey Piurek, who split his career between Plainville and West Haven, 525; and Gerry Rousseau of Waterford with 512.
Seymour, which ran out the string on a perfect regular season at 20-0, leads the New Haven Register coaches’ and media poll with all 15 first-place votes.
Second is Stamford, 16-1, which has scored 10 or more runs in five of its last seven games.
Guilford, 18-2, is third after finishing its season strongly including a pay-back win over Branford, 4-1. The Hornets had won a 4-2 game the first time the two played. That was Guilford’s last loss and the Indians and Hornets are the 1-2 seeds in the Southern Connecticut Conference tournament.
Amity Regional, 15-4, is fourth. The Spartans are the fourth seed in the SCC tournament with N. 7 Xavier, 15-4, the third seed. Plainville, 13-3, is ranked fifth with Newington, 13-3 with two losses in a row, is sixth with Xavier seventh. Berlin, 13-5, dropped from second to eighth after losing three straight. Branford, 15-4, is ninth with Simsbury, 14-3, tenth.
Fairfield Ludlowe, Bunnell- Stratford, and Wethersfield, last week’s 8-9-10 teams, dropped out, although all were among the others receiving votes.
Rudy Canelli Memorial Scholarships
The New Haven Tip-Off Club, the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials and the Canelli family have announced the winners of the Rudy Canelli Memorial Scholarships.
Canelli was a former IAABO president who also was a local educator, coach and official as well as being very active in the Tip-Off Club.
The awards go to Jessica Biercevicz of Seymour and Christine Warner of North Haven. Both were basketball players and National Honor Society members. Biercevicz will attend Marist and Warner plans to go either to Babson or Carnegie Mellon.
